[Steve] Humanity itself is distinguished only by an arbitrary line that modern humans decide to draw at some point in evolutionary history.
[Arlo] I disagree with Pirsig here and there, mostly over wording choices, but I take significant exception to his notion that the social and intellectual levels are reserved for humans. What this does is remove humans from the continuum that is an evolutionary morality, and arbitrarily places "man" out of the web of the natural cosmos. I would have no problem with the idea that "man" evidences the most complex manipulation of intellectual patterns (even so far that very few, many only a couple, exhibit even rudimentary behavior we'd call intellectual), and that on the social level man is (again) the most complex social organism. But saying again that no other species evidences social behavior but "man" defines "social" in such a way that it looses any connection with natural observations, let alone everything we've learned from other disciplines. In other words, you simply CAN'T provide a definition for what "social patterns" are that does not include man, unless you arbitrarily place "man" in the definition itself. Try it. Give me a definition of "social" that would limit it it "man" that does not pre-define itself using "man" in that definition. "Language use"? Evident in other species (even if we say "crudely"). "Division of labor"? Social hierarchies? Other species as well. And I'll take it one step further to avoid falling into the trap of seeing only "modern man" as social. Go back into pre-history until you find the very first humans you'd define as "social". Now, tell me what it is that makes THEM social beings in such a way that your definition does not capture (again, even crudely) some other species. Tool use? Nope. What I'm saying is that the appearance of social patterns (and intellectual ones) rests on a level of complexity, not on an arbitrary (and mistaken) need to place "man" apart from nature. Placing "man" above the "beasts" is one thing, if you do so on a continuum (as Pirsig does with the vegetarianism example), but quite another if you consider his/her very nature to place him superiorly alone in the cosmos. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
